Competitiveness within the Big 5 leagues.

[badgerboy]

This follows on from an earlier post I made with statistics specific to the English game since 1950.

I have now finished compiling similar stats for the other current big five leagues (Spain, Italy, France & Germany) & on this thread I intend to show these stats in a few different ways to attempt a comparison with the competitiveness of the various leagues - both overall - & over different decades.

The first list - apologies again for the untidiness - lists the countries (& decades) in order of - firstly the number of different title winners, then the number of runners-up, then 3rds etc. The 6 different numbers refer to: (a) Champions, (b) Teams finishing 1st or 2nd, (c) Teams finishing 1st-3rd, (d) Teams finishing 1st-4th, (e) Teams finishing 1st-6th, (f) Teams finishing 1st-10th.

I hope I've kept "clerical errors" to a minimum but a 100% guarantee of accuracy cannot be given. Please note that I've used information as per final tables from rsssf.com. Where they show a revised official table (example Inter as Champions last year) I use this but where the old table remains I use that (example Juve are counted as Champions in 2004-05 based on the final league standings despite being officially stripped of the title). Please note also that - for Germany - I show separate 1-10 statistics since the Bundesliga began in 1963-64 but also show overall stats for the first two places (finalists in a competition between the best teams in a competition involving the various Oberliga winners) from 1950.

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England	16	24	29	31	39	44
Germany	15	23				
France	13	18	24	29	33	40
Italy	12	16	17	19	24	41
Germany (Since 1964)	11	16	20	21	27	33
England 1960s	8	11	12	15	17	25
Spain	7	11	16	20	27	39
France 1990s	7	9	9	11	15	22
England 1950s	6	9	11	14	20	26
Italy 1970s	6	9	11	11	13	19
England 1970s	6	8	13	15	21	26
Italy 1980s	6	8	8	9	13	21
France 1980s	6	7	10	11	17	24
France 1950s	5	9	12	14	17	23
France 1970s	5	8	12	15	20	23
England 1990s	5	7	13	13	18	23
Germany 1990s	5	7	11	13	17	21
Italy 1960s	5	7	8	9	13	23
Italy 2000s	5	5	5	8	11	21
France 1960s	4	8	14	20	22	28
England 1980s	4	8	11	13	20	27
Germany 1970s	4	7	11	12	14	19
Italy 1990s	4	7	10	12	13	19
Spain 1970s	4	7	9	11	16	20
Spain 1950s	4	7	7	8	13	20
Spain 2000s	4	6	8	12	16	21
Italy 1950s	4	5	8	10	12	21
Spain 1980s	4	5	8	9	14	17
Germany 1980s	4	5	7	9	13	21
France 2000s	3	7	9	10	13	18
Spain 1990s	3	6	10	12	17	23
Germany 2000s	3	6	7	9	12	19
Spain 1960s	3	4	9	13	15	22
England 2000s	3	4	6	7	12	22

Interesting to see that - in terms purely of different winners - the Spanish league - which I perceive as by far the most "competitive" has by far the fewest different winners over time. In fact fewer different clubs have been Spanish champions since 1950 than managed it in England in the 1960s alone!

Alternatively the Italian league - which I think of as highly uncompetitive, at least in recent times - has produced more different winners in the current decade than any of the other top leagues.

It's also easy to see why there is such concern in England over the sudden lack of competitiveness of the Premier League. It's gone from being one of the most competitive in nearly every previous decade to the least competitive of the lot in the current one.

[badgerboy]

Just to show some of the same stats but in a few different orders.

First here it is in order of the different number of clubs finishing in the top three in each period.

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England	29
France	24
Germany (Since 1964)	20
Italy	17
Spain	16
France 1960s	14
England 1970s	13
England 1990s	13
England 1960s	12
France 1950s	12
France 1970s	12
England 1950s	11
Italy 1970s	11
Germany 1990s	11
England 1980s	11
Germany 1970s	11
France 1980s	10
Italy 1990s	10
Spain 1990s	10
France 1990s	9
Spain 1970s	9
France 2000s	9
Spain 1960s	9
Italy 1980s	8
Italy 1960s	8
Spain 2000s	8
Italy 1950s	8
Spain 1980s	8
Spain 1950s	7
Germany 1980s	7
Germany 2000s	7
England 2000s	6
Italy 2000s	5

England still by far the best & Spain still the worst overall - but now very little between Italy & Spain.

The current decade looks pretty uncompetitive compared to others in everywhere except Spain - although of course the addition of three more years worth of numbers might(?) make a big difference.

By individual decades the six most competitive are shared by England & France.

[badgerboy]

Next the top six.

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England	39
France	33
Germany (Since 1964)	27
Spain	27
Italy	24
France 1960s	22
England 1970s	21
France 1970s	20
England 1950s	20
England 1980s	20
England 1990s	18
England 1960s	17
France 1950s	17
Germany 1990s	17
France 1980s	17
Spain 1990s	17
Spain 1970s	16
Spain 2000s	16
France 1990s	15
Spain 1960s	15
Germany 1970s	14
Spain 1980s	14
Italy 1970s	13
Italy 1990s	13
France 2000s	13
Italy 1980s	13
Italy 1960s	13
Spain 1950s	13
Germany 1980s	13
Italy 1950s	12
Germany 2000s	12
England 2000s	12
Italy 2000s	11

By separate decades the numbers for Spain (apart from the 1950s) compared to Italy suddenly bear more resemblance to my own perceptions. I guess that this means that more teams compete successfully for the top five or six in Spain over a period but it's hard to make the breakthrough & actually win a Championship. On the other hand in Italy it tends to be the same handful of clubs competing at the top over a certain period but once you're a "top six" club for any length of time there's a pretty good chance you'll cary off the title at least once.

As an Englishman I have to say I'm very happy that so many different clubs have been top six finishers over the years compared especially to Spain & Italy. Obviously a huge factor in why there are so many English clubs down the leagues with huge loyal support.

[badgerboy]

And lastly the top 10...

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England	44
Italy	41
France	40
Spain	39
Germany (Since 1964)	33
France 1960s	28
England 1980s	27
England 1970s	26
England 1950s	26
England 1960s	25
France 1980s	24
France 1970s	23
England 1990s	23
France 1950s	23
Spain 1990s	23
Italy 1960s	23
France 1990s	22
Spain 1960s	22
England 2000s	22
Germany 1990s	21
Spain 2000s	21
Italy 1980s	21
Germany 1980s	21
Italy 1950s	21
Italy 2000s	21
Spain 1970s	20
Spain 1950s	20
Germany 1970s	19
Italy 1970s	19
Italy 1990s	19
Germany 2000s	19
France 2000s	18
Spain 1980s	17

[Lyonnais]

It is difficult to agree on what competitivness means and then to measure it and we can see on your calculations that you can have very different conclusions depending on your focus (e.g. if you focus on the number of different champions or the number of different teams in the top 6).

Another approach is not to focus on rankings and number of different teams, but to focus on points and basically see how the number of points are distributed among the different teams within the League.

Si I calculated the standard deviation from their mean in the top 5 leagues to see which league is the most competitive.

Current season:
14.81 - Italy (did not take into account penalties)
14.34 - England
10.17 - Spain
8.81 - Germany
8.12 - France

It seems to me that these results are in line with what I spontaneously suspected, i.e. Serie A and PL are not very equal, whereas the Bundesliga and the Ligue 1 are pretty much tight.

I also performed the same analysis over the last few years for England and France only (not only because they have opposite profiles, but also because I was too lazy to do the other ones).

England:
18.14 - 2006
16.65 - 2005
14.79 - 2004
14.93 - 2003
16.26 - 2002
13.62 - 2001
15.66 - 2000
13.65 - 1999
12.12 - 1998
11.74 - 1997
14.78 - 1996
15.95 - 1995 (22 teams)
15.10 - 1994 (22)
10.14 - 1993 (22)
12.02 - 1992 (22)
13.86 - 1991 (22)
11.75 - 1990 (20 teams)

The average deviation for the period 2002-2006 (16.16 pts) really is higher than the previous 5 year period 1997-2001 (13.35 pts). So it is statistically pretty obvious that the Premiership is getting less and less competitive (and this season deviation - which should grow - confirms this).

France
13.27 - 2006
10.04 - 2005
13.69 - 2004
11.74 - 2003
10.18 - 2002 (18 teams)
9.98 - 2001 (18 )
7.87 - 2000 (18 )
13.11 - 1999 (18 )
11.69 - 1998 (18 )
13.45 - 1997 (20 teams)
11.35 - 1996
13.16 - 1995
9.27 - 1994

The trend that can be observed in England is not true in France. If we compare 20-team leagues, the average deviation over the 2003-2006 period is 12.18 pts vs. 11.81 in the 1994-97 period. On one side, a leader has become dominant (which increases the deviation) but on the other side challengers are much closer to the average (which decreases the deviation).

At the end, if we compare the 2 leagues, some interesting figures (over the 2003-06 period only to have 20-team leagues):

- The English champion in average had 90 points (89.75) whereas the French champion had 77.5 points. Pretty significant I believe.
The worst English champion - Manchester United in 2003 - had 83 pts whereas the best French champion had 84 pts (2006). Lyon was champion in 2003 with 68 points, but with the same total, Lyon would not have been in the top 3 in the Premier League over the 2003-2006 period.
It is interesting to note that the average total points for the English champion is much higher over the 2002-06 period (89.2 pts) than over the 1997-2001 period (80.6 pts).

- the difference is the same if you consider Top 5 teams only. In average top 5 teams in England got 74 pts vs. 67 in France.

- very interesting too to focus on the relegated teams. Relegated teams had in average 30.25 pts in England vs. 34.83 pts in France. More than 4 pts of difference in average over 12 teams is significant.